Descriptions

Lake Chad is an important fish supply centre in the semi-arid zone of West Africa. Processed Fish Trade (PFT) has catered neighbouring countries for a long time. However, Fresh Fish Trade (FFT) boomed due to severe droughts between 1970 and 1994, by which the PFT main fish species were replaced by species suited to FFT, and to the introduction of modern technology. As migrant fishermen increased, FFT also raised. In PFT the relationship between fishermen and middlemen is usually explained as Patron-Client Relationship (PCR), characterized by reciprocal agreement and exclusivity. The objective of this study was to describe FFT at Lake Chad, which has hardly been surveyed yet, and to compare the PCR in FFT and PFT. Field survey was conducted at Commune of Darak in Cameroon on March 2011. In the case of FFT, most of middlemen dealt with fishermen who got their fishing gears by themselves and quoted market price of major species was stable, but there were some cases in which fishermen paying back the gears borrowed from middlemen resulted in a deviation from the market price. Since trade was mostly occasional, interaction between middlemen and fishermen was mostly temporary, not long-term relations based on trust, so that middlemen had to keep the quoted market price in order not to lose their client. Therefore, fishermen are less constricted by and more equal to middlemen than in regular PFT. Because of this kind of PRC, FFT does not fit the ‘economy of affection’ model, but rather resembles ‘market economy’.